The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Automation

How many of your team’s responsibilities do you think you could hand off to a machine?

McKinsey estimates that about half of work could be automated. Imagine how much more work your team could complete with twice as much time, and no dull data entry bogging them down.

Automation has moved from being a luxury to a necessity, with Forrester predicting that it can cut operating costs by up to 90%. With your costs down, automation leaves you with budget to spend on innovation over maintenance.

Not convinced? Read on…

Despite its power, automation can seem scary at first.

If you’re a team leader, you might be worried that it takes too much work to set up. Your manager might be worried that it means hiring more engineers, and your team could be scared robots will take their jobs.

It’s just not true.

Automation is a powerful tool your team can use to be more efficient. Using it lets you hand off menial tasks to computers so that everyone can focus on the important work — work that only humans can do.

Automation is a big concept. It’s hard to know where to start.

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

This guide will take you through:

What automation is

What types of business process automation there are

Why you should be using it in your business

Methods to let you get started with automation

How to automate customer success

How to automate HR

How to automate customer support

It’s not complex, it’s not scary, and it certainly won’t be putting your team out of a job. Automation is designed to let people produce more work to a higher standard with less effort.

Who is this guide for?

If you’re not using automation, this guide is for you. Your team is wasting valuable time on tasks that could be handed off to a machine.

If you’re aware of automation but don’t know where to start, this guide is for you. In it, you’ll learn how to apply automation to real business cases and see results straight away.

If you’re automating some tasks but know you could do more. This guide takes a comprehensive look at the different kinds of automation you can implement, from the basic to the complex.

If you’re doing any of the following tasks by hand:

CRM maintenance

Routinely moving documents between apps or folders

Copying and pasting data between your tools

Adding meeting events to your calendar

Following up with customers or leads

Sending and collecting documents for signing

Creating sales proposals

Invoicing

Processing feedback from customers

Identifying image content or message tone

These sound like little tasks, but they add up. For example, SiriusDecisions reports that a staggering 64% of a salesperson’s time goes to administrative tasks instead of selling. If the same goes for your team, reducing administrative work could unlock much higher performance.

Get work done faster, without variance or mistakes

You can hire the most capable people, but unless they’re robots in disguise, there will be variance or mistakes in their work. With automation, you’ll reduce the risk by giving the repetitive tasks to a computer.

This helps to make output more predictable, reduce mistakes, and make your team happier (whoever used to have to trawl through the most spreadsheets will suddenly feel a lot better about their job!). Since a machine can run constantly without rest, you could have it process large sets of data on autopilot, 24/7. That’s something you’re not going to get out of even the most dedicated employee.

Ready to reduce errors, get work done faster, and manage a happier team?